Shostakovich entered the Petrograd Conservatoire of music in 1919, two years prior to the Bolshevik seizure of power. The Regime was looking for new soviet composers and Shostakovich was selected. By 1926, when Shostakovich was only 20, his first symphony was performed to great popular applause. The Bolsheviks and many others believed his career was destined for great things. Stalinism had not yet tightened its cultural grip, so Shostakovich’s technical brilliance, quirky humour and biting satire were smiled upon by the regime. Furthermore, the lack of a more popular appeal was not yet a target for Communist criticism.
‘Failure would lead to disgrace or demotion; under Stalin it could result in execution. It is hardly surprising that such an environment encouraged the emergence of persons of exceptional motivation’1
By the 1930’s, Stalin had announced that music must be written in a patriotic style and follow the Marxism-Leninist ideologies. Stalin wanted melodies that were whistlable, and Shostakovich often fell into disgrace for their atonal and discordant approach. Shostakovich’s first opera, ‘The Nose’, was accused of being ‘bourgeois decadence’ and its successor in 1936, ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk’,despite being well received for the first two years, and premiering in Moscow and Leningrad was later seen as an atrocity. Shostakovich had intended it to be one of four operas based on the theme of women in society. The opera was based on Katerina Ismailova a murderess who had walled up her husband in a cellar! The music and staging was graphically portrayed, with a love making scene and finale set amongst convicts, in Siberia. Many musical historians believe that it was more the setting than the music that had angered Stalin, when he saw the opera in 1936, as he walked out of the performance. Pravda the communist newspaper denounced the opera as neurotic, coarse and vulgar in a vitriolic article headed ‘Chaos instead of music’. Shostakovich was made to be an enemy of the people and his music was branded as ‘cacophonous’ and ‘pornographic’, Pravda also threatened that the composer ‘could end very badly’ if he did not mend his ways. From that day, Shostakovich had a ready packed suitcase with warm clothes and some belongings in case the NKVD, Stalin’s private police force, ever arrived unannounced.
As Stalin’s regime strengthened the effect it had on Russian music was immense. For example, there were orchestras without conductors (both in rehearsal and performance), claiming it was a way of becoming socialist pioneers by living a ‘life based on equality and human fulfilment through free collective work.’2 There was also a movement of ‘concerts in the factory’ using experimental objects such as sirens, turbines and hooters, creating new sounds by electronic means. Many believed it would lead to a new musical aesthetic closer to the psyche of the workers. Shostakovich took advantage of this movement and used the sounds of factory whistles to the climax of his second symphony ‘To October’. Stalin wanted to Russify all culture and even had operas renamed so that they would fit in with the Marxist ideology, for example, Glinka’s Life of the Tsar became The Hammer and the Sickle.
As time went on artists such as Shostakovich and Akhmatova were given some more freedom in their work as long as their works avoided direct criticism of Marxism-Leninism and had a patriotic resonance. The Union of Soviet composers still denounced Shostakovich and his works saying they were ‘incomprehensible’, ‘formalist’ and ‘against the proletariat’. By this time Shostakovich had written and was rehearsing his Fourth Symphony. However, due to its large pessimistic mood he suddenly withdrew it, fearing it would not be well received by the Communist party or union. Instead he wrote his famous Fifth Symphony, which bore the subtitle ‘A Soviet Artist’s practical creative reply to just criticism’. Shostakovich achieved success in this venture, although as shown in his testimony, he was terrified about the outcome:
‘The atmosphere was highly charged, the hall was filled- as they say, all the best people were there, and all the worst too. It was definitely a critical situation, and not only for me. Which way would the wind blow?’3
As the Second World War was coming to an end, the Nazis had occupied Leningrad for 503 days, millions died of starvation, and Shostakovich had been in the middle of it all. He was able to compose his Seventh Symphony during this time and this was to make him famous throughout the West as a symphonist; this however meant he never wrote another opera. The symphony disseminated all over the West as a symbol of resistance to Nazism. Unfortunately his later works were again heavily criticised by the Communist regime. For the last five years of Stalin’s reign, Shostakovich had to play it safe, as his life was on the line, and more and more people were disappearing by the day due to Stalin’s purges. Shostakovich stuck to composing film music and patriotic cantatas for public consumption, meaning he had to keep works, such as the First Violin Concerto and Fourth String Quartet, hidden from the authorities.
Only after the death of Stalin could Shostakovich express his true self again, and he was able to freely compose his Tenth Symphony, which later became one of fifteen different symphonies. Shostakovich was able to fulfil his musicality after the Stalin regime. However, it is tragic to think that because of such a strict regime Shostakovich often held back, and it is difficult to know whether or not he would have composed more operas or been more experimental in his style. In 1975 Dmitri Shostakovich died, having survived the most terrifying regime ever to exist in Russia. He became a respected musician, creating influential symphonic works that gave audiences an insight into what life was really like in Stalinist Russia. However, in the absence of the operas that Shostakovich may have written, it is the works of his 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets that have established him as the one composer, unquestionably loyal to Soviet Russia, who has achieved world recognition and status.
1 Russia: An experiment with the people. Robert Service
2 Images of Music Erich Auerbach
3 My Testimony. Dmitri Shostakovich
